Читать книгу Alaskan Hideaway - Beth Carpenter - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

URSULA PULLED TWO pans of cinnamon rolls from the oven and set them on a wire rack to cool. The divine aromas of yeast, butter and spice filled the kitchen. She eyed the pans doubtfully. Everybody liked bread, right? Occasionally she had a guest with special dietary needs, but the odds of her new neighbor not appreciating a plate of homemade cinnamon rolls had to be low. And even if Marge was right and he was an actor from Hollywood who didn’t eat gluten, he’d surely appreciate the gesture.

Movie star. She shook her head and smiled. Why would someone famous want to buy Betty’s cabin? It only had two bedrooms. The kitchen hadn’t been remodeled since the forties. Neither had the bathroom. The guy probably asked Penny’s husband, Fred, not to spread his name around to avoid a pesky relative or debt collector.

Could someone really do that? Keep your name a secret? Property tax records were public, weren’t they? Ursula opened her laptop and did a search for Kenai Peninsula Borough’s tax records. She located the property on the map and clicked on it, but the record hadn’t been updated from Betty’s name. Ah, but she had a source. The assistant at the tax assessor’s office had stayed in the inn for several weeks while she house-hunted.

Ursula picked up the phone and called. After exchanging pleasantries, she got down to business. “So, Michelle, I seem to have a new neighbor. I was trying to look up his name on the tax records, but they haven’t been updated yet.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

“Well, I was hoping to do some background research first, to—”

“Sorry. Can you hang on a minute? Someone’s in my office.” Michelle didn’t bother to put the phone on hold, and Ursula tapped her fingers while listening to a long conversation about the probable whereabouts of someone’s stapler before she came back on the line. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”

“I just wondered if you’d received the paperwork on the new owner of the property next door.” Ursula read the parcel number from the form.

“Let me look.” Papers crackled. “Here it is. It’s an LLC.”

“What’s that?”

“A limited liability company. This one’s called R&A Holdings.”

“Does that mean he’s running a business there?”

“Not necessarily. Some people hold their assets in LLCs for other reasons.”

“Doesn’t he have to give a name or something?”

“Not on my records. Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way and introduce yourself.”

“I guess so. Thanks anyway.”

“You’re welcome. Stop by next time you’re in town and we’ll grab coffee.”

“I will. Talk with you soon.” Ursula hung up the phone and stared at the wall. This could be good news. Her new neighbor was a limited liability company, not a movie star. Probably a flipper, with plans for a quick remodel and resell. If so, this could work out just fine. He would probably be thrilled to make a small profit with no work, and she could get started on the RV park. Win-win. First thing tomorrow, she would pay him a visit.

* * *

MAC’S EYES FLEW OPEN, his dream shattering into fragments. Thanks to the heavy curtains covering the small bedroom window, only the charging light from his cell phone broke up the darkness. After a long day of unpacking and moving boxes, he’d fallen asleep almost immediately, but it wasn’t long before the dreams came. He could never remember them, just bits and pieces. A scream of pain. Crimson drops of blood on a white sweater. His own heart pounding and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.

It was in the darkness he felt the full weight of his mistakes. He’d failed her. Failed to understand the magnitude of danger she was in. Ignored his own instincts. Told himself she was old enough to make her own decisions. Maybe she was, but he should have tried harder to guide her, should have been more supportive. Should have made it clear she could count on him if things went wrong, and there would be no I told you so. Should have said I love you more often. Because now it was too late.

Eventually, he gave up trying to sleep and moved into the living room. The dog lifted her head from her bed beside the woodstove and thumped her tail against the floor. Mac added a couple of logs to the stove and stoked the fire. He selected a branch from the woodbin, picked up his grandfather’s pocketknife from the table and settled into a chair beside the stove. A warm muzzle rested on his foot.

The wood stripped away in long curls, landing in the kindling box at his feet. Once the branch was smooth, he began to whittle, a notch here, an arch there. As he worked, the terrors of his dream worked their way out of his head and into the wood. As the last log in the stove fell into a pile of embers, Mac laid the carving aside and yawned. Maybe now he could sleep.

* * *

ONCE SHE’D FED her guests and cleaned up the breakfast dishes the next morning, Ursula arranged the extra cinnamon rolls on a pretty blue-and-white plate she’d picked up at the church rummage sale. She wrapped them carefully and glanced at the clock on the stove. Was nine too early to drop in on a neighbor? It shouldn’t be. And she didn’t want to wait too late, for fear he’d be out shopping for building supplies.

Today, instead of taking the ski trail, she walked the quarter mile along the highway to his driveway, carrying the plate. A strip of duct tape covered Betty’s name on the dented mailbox. An Anchorage newspaper waited in the tube below. Ursula tucked the newspaper under her arm and followed the drive to another gate that Betty had never used. Ursula gave a soft testing whistle, but no guard dog appeared to challenge her, so she unlatched the gate and slipped inside, closing it behind her.

The sun never made it over the mountain this time of year, but the sky was growing brighter and she didn’t need her flashlight to make her way along the driveway toward the porch. No lights shown in the cabin windows; hopefully she wasn’t wasting her time. An unfamiliar pedestal table rested beside Betty’s old Adirondack chair on the porch.

The steps crackled in the cold as she climbed them. Frantic barking erupted inside the house, punctuated by thumps of a canine body slamming repeatedly against the inside of the door Ursula hoped was securely latched. No need to knock, anyway. She held the plate in front of her and practiced her most welcoming smile as she waited for her new neighbor to call off the dog and answer the door.

And she waited. Eventually, the dog gave up on breaking the door down. Instead the heavy curtains in the window pushed upward, and a black-and-white head appeared. The dog tilted its head, watching her. Obviously, the dog’s owner wasn’t home.

Ursula set the rolls on the table, pulled a notepad and pencil from her pocket and jotted a short message of welcome and her phone number. As she bent to tuck it under the plate, she noticed a whimsical carving around the table pedestal of a chubby puppy chasing its tail. She smiled. Maybe her new neighbor wasn’t the curmudgeon he seemed.

She headed home at a brisk walk, breathing in the crisp air. Behind the fence, spruce trees sagged under their load of snow. It was a lovely winter day, with not a breath of wind. The porch table reassured her. After all, how bad could a man be who loved puppies? He’d find the rolls and call her, and they could get this all straightened out. Everything was going to be fine.

* * *

MAC WATCHED HER go from behind the curtain. Figured. He’d driven thirty-nine hundred miles to get away from people, only to have some strange woman pounding on his door three hours after he’d finally managed to fall asleep. Well, she didn’t literally pound, but she might as well have considering the barking fit her visit inspired.

To add insult to injury, the bounce in her step as she strolled along his driveway seemed to indicate she was enjoying her morning, in contrast with his pounding head and gritty eyelids. A cold nose pressed into his hand. He turned to greet the dog. “I see you’ve been hard at work already.”

The pit bull wagged her tail and jerked her head toward the empty bowl in the kitchen. He took the hint and filled it with kibble before starting a pot of coffee for himself. While it brewed, he dropped to the rug for his usual round of push-ups. He used to go out for a run every morning before breakfast, too, but the paparazzi put a stop to that.

Once he’d completed fifty push-ups, he got up and pulled the curtain aside to make sure the woman was gone and had latched the gate behind her. The dog scratched on the door, so Mac opened it to let her out and stepped onto the porch, shivering in the cold. A newspaper and plate of rolls sat on the table—cinnamon pecan, according to the cutesy label shaped like a daisy. Underneath, he found a note asking him to call her.

Just what he needed—some nosy neighbor trying to woo him with homemade treats. He’d sworn the local lawyer to secrecy, but somehow word must have gotten out he was here. Well, she wasn’t the first woman to make a play for him since he’d become successful, and like all the others, she was doomed to disappointment. He whistled for the dog and returned to the cabin, dropping the note into the trashcan under the sink. He started to pitch the rolls in after it, but his stomach growled, reminding him he’d not yet had a chance to buy milk for his raisin bran.

No sense letting good food go to waste. He picked up a roll and bit into it. Cream cheese frosting melted in his mouth. He chewed, savoring the blending of fresh bread and sweet cinnamon. Quite possibly the best cinnamon rolls he’d tasted since he was a boy, visiting his grandmother’s house. He took another bite. These might in fact edge Gram’s off the middle podium. Shame he wouldn’t be getting any more once she figured out he was a lost cause.

He poured a cup of coffee and sank into a chair at the scrubbed pine table, pushing aside a pile of mail he’d found in a box when he unpacked. A return address caught his eye. A bill from the private investigator. Chandler had sounded almost apologetic about billing him for the hours spent following leads that went nowhere, but Mac didn’t care how much it cost, how many possibilities turned out to be dead ends. They couldn’t quit. Not until they found Andi’s killer. Eventually, they would. People didn’t just vanish.

He set the bill aside to pay later and slid the newspaper from its sleeve. A subscription offer fluttered to the ground. He opened the paper and took another bite of cinnamon roll. And another. There was something restful about perusing local politics and events that didn’t concern him. By noon, he’d written a check to the investigator, unpacked all the boxes marked kitchen, called to subscribe to the Anchorage newspaper and wiped out the entire plate of cinnamon rolls. He washed the plate and set it in the drainer to dry. His family used to eat off blue-and-white plates not too different from this one when he was a boy.

His job was to wash dishes, and his mother would dry. She’d wipe each plate, stack them in the cupboard and sigh because there were only seven. He’d heard the story a dozen times. How her cousin had taken home a plate of leftovers one evening and moved off to California without ever returning the plate, leaving her with an incomplete set. He was never clear exactly why Mom couldn’t have asked for the plate back or bought another one, but she didn’t. Instead, she mourned the loss nightly.

He eyed the plate in his drainer. According to the note, the woman lived in the big house on the next property over. He needed to drive into Seward that afternoon to buy groceries. He could easily drop off the plate on the way. But his polite gesture could be misconstrued as a friendly overture, which posed a danger to his privacy. If he ignored her, she’d leave him alone.

And that was really Mac’s only goal in moving to Alaska. To be left alone.

* * *

URSULA HAD WAITED three long days, but the call never came. How was she going to convince the guy it was in his best interest to sell if he wouldn’t talk to her? Her cinnamon rolls seldom failed, but maybe he really didn’t eat gluten. Time to pull out the big guns.

She took a jar of smoked sockeye she’d canned last summer from her pantry. Chopped green onions, lemon juice, cream cheese and a few secret seasonings turned it into her special salmon dip. She filled a crock and tucked it into her backpack, along with a bag of moose jerky, and strapped on her snowshoes.

A fresh snow had obliterated the tracks on the ski trail since their aborted outing a few days ago. No doubt the groomer had laid fresh tracks on the main trails but he could no longer reach her property with the gates closed. Getting them opened should be her first order of business.

She reached the gate, relieved to see the SUV parked between the house and the garage. Good. He was home. Hopefully, the dog was in the house with him, but if not, she had a plan B. Ursula rattled the gate and waited.

Sure enough, a black-and-white blur bounded toward her, almost disappearing into the deep snow between leaps. The dog must be in great physical condition to be able to bark and run at the same time.

The pit bull reached the gate and bounced into the air, almost head high, barking. Ursula wasn’t sure this was going to work, but she had to try. She laid down her ski poles to take off her backpack. The barking stopped. She looked up. The pit bull still watched her. Ursula reached toward the poles, and a low rumble emanated from the dog’s throat.

Aha. “Bad experience with a stick? Poor puppy.” Ursula left the poles lying on the ground and spoke in a gentle voice. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’d never hurt you.” She unzipped her backpack, pulled out a stick of jerky and tore off a bite-size piece. “Would you like a treat?” She tossed the bite to the dog.

The dog jumped into the air to catch the tidbit. Tail wagging, it waited expectantly. Ursula smiled. “That’s a good boy.” She checked. “Girl, I mean. Want some more?”

The pit bull cocked her head. Ursula tossed another bite. The dog came closer and stuck her nose between the gate and the fence, wagging her tail harder. Ursula handed her another bit of jerky. The dog licked her hand and gently took the meat from her. “All that bluster is just for show, isn’t it? You’re really a marshmallow.”

The dog wagged in agreement. Leaving the ski poles behind, Ursula pulled the chain up over the post to unlatch the gate and slipped inside. She fastened the gate behind her and gave her new best friend another bite of jerky. Together, they crossed the meadow between the gate and the house, Ursula on snowshoes and the dog crashing through the snow beside her.

Before she reached the house, Ursula noticed a light in the window of the oversize detached garage. When Betty’s husband built it forty years ago, he’d included a woodworking space as well as room for cars. The light was coming from the workshop area.

The dog headed straight for the workshop and squeezed through a new dog hatch cut into the outer door. The door must not have been completely latched, because it opened when the dog pushed against it. Ursula removed her snowshoes, pulled the crock of salmon dip from her backpack and followed the dog inside.

The workshop featured an arctic entry, a small alcove inside the door leading to another door off to one side to keep the wind from blowing in every time someone opened the door. The inside door stood open, and the dog padded on into the main room. A bench against the wall held a box full of carved wood. Curious, Ursula picked up one of the pieces.

The polished wood retained the natural curves of a tree limb, but a face peered out from the wood grain—an inquisitive gnome with shaggy eyebrows and a long beard. The piece gave the impression that the face had been in the wood all along and just needed a skilled craftsman to let it out. A quick glance showed maybe a dozen similar carvings, each face unique. Enchanting.

The sound of the dog’s toenails clicking across the concrete floor of the shop reminded Ursula why she was there.

She returned the carving to the box and stepped inside, inhaling the piney scent of fresh sawdust. At the far end, a man perched on a stool. His profile revealed a strong brow and a determined jawline. A few gray threads wove through thick brown hair that could have used a trim. His full concentration was on the blade he was using to remove chips of wood from the chunk in his hand. The dog, lying on a cushion at his feet, wagged her tail when Ursula appeared. The man looked up and seemed anything but pleased to see her there.

Before he could speak, Ursula jumped in, determined to be friendly. “Forgive me for just walking in. The door was open.”

He didn’t smile back. “The sign says No Trespassing.”

“Oh, but I’m your next-door neighbor.” She took a step closer. “Ursula.”

He remained where he was. “How did you get past the dog?”

“We’re friends. Aren’t we, sweetie?” The dog trotted over to her and nudged her hand. Ursula smiled. “She likes my jerky.”

The man let out a huff of exasperation. “What do you want?”

Ursula licked her lip. “I came to see you. That is, I brought you some salmon dip. It’s homemade, from Copper River sockeye I smoked myself.” She held out the crock. “I hope you found the cinnamon rolls I left a few days ago.”

He made no move to accept her offering. “No, thanks. I’m busy right now, so—”

Okay, the friendly approach wasn’t working. Time to get down to business. She straightened to her full height. “This won’t take but a minute. What are your plans for the house? Are you fixing it up to sell? Because if you are, I’m interested in buying.”

“No. I have no plans to sell.”

“What if I’m willing to pay, say, ten percent more than you did? That’s a decent rate of return for a quick investment.”

“Not interested.” He returned his attention to the carving in his hand and flicked away a stray curl of wood.

For the first time, Ursula noticed more of the carved faces lying on the workbench beside him. Unlike the ones she’d seen in the box, these seemed tortured, in pain. The half-finished carving in his hand appeared to be screaming. She looked away. “If you do decide to sell, will you let me know before you list the property?”

“Yes. Fine. If I ever do, you’ll be at the top of my list. What was your name again?”

“Ursula. Ursula Anderson.”

“All right, Ms. Anderson. But don’t hold your breath.” He pushed his knife blade against the wood.

“Your carvings are amazing. I saw the ones on the bench in the entryway. Is there a name for that sort of sculpture?”

He concentrated on a cut he was making before he replied. “People call them wood spirits.”

“Wood spirits. That’s perfect.” She stepped closer and touched one lying on the workbench that appeared to be weeping. The wood was cool and smooth under her finger. “How do you decide what sort of face to carve?”

He gathered up the carvings and set them out of her reach. “I don’t have time for a discussion right now. If you’ll excuse me...”

She held up a hand. “Just one more little thing and then I’ll let you be. I don’t know if you know, but I run a bed-and-breakfast inn. The main skiing and hiking trails are just behind and to the east of your property, and there’s always been a right-of-way through your back corner connecting the ski trails to the trail across my property.”

“No. I don’t know anything about that.”

“Well, there is. Your gates are cutting my guests off from the trails. I’d much appreciate it if you’d open them.”

He stared at her as if she’d suggested he cut off his foot. “You want me to let a bunch of strangers traipse across my property?”

“Only that little corner in the back.”

“That rather defeats the purpose behind private property, don’t you think?”

“Not at all. I’ll make sure my guests understand they are to stay on the trails and not disturb you in any way.”

He stood, towering over her by a good six inches. “But I am disturbed. You’re disturbing me right now. One of the main selling points of this property was that it’s completely fenced and private.”

“Betty lived here for fifty years. She always kept the trail open, and never had a problem.”

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m not Betty.”

“I’ve noticed.” Ursula couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice.

“Good. I’m glad we understand one another. Now, Ms. Anderson—”

“Ursula, please.” One more last-ditch attempt at friendly conversation.

“Ursula. Could you please take your salmon and your jerky and any other bribes you might have in that backpack of yours, and let yourself outside the fence before I have you arrested for trespassing?”

She bit back a retort. “I’ll go. But if you change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

“If you do, I’m the Forget-me-not Inn. You can get my number or email from the website.”

“Goodbye.”

Ursula gave the dog one final pat and left, shutting the door with more force than was necessary. She strapped on her snowshoes and returned the salmon dip to her pack. Looked like her guests arriving that evening would be getting a little extra treat to help make up for not being able to ski from the inn to the trails. At least she hoped it did, because it didn’t look like she was getting those gates opened anytime soon.

She wasn’t giving up. There had to be some way to convince the old grouch that a few skiers in the back corner of his lot weren’t going to kill him. She’d even have offered to pay an access fee if he’d let her talk. What was his problem anyway? He may have been a natural-born people hater, but there was more to his story than that. The agony in those wooden faces told her so.

* * *

“SOME GUARD DOG you are,” Mac growled. The pit bull hung her head and crept closer to him, liquid brown eyes begging for forgiveness. Mac laughed. “You don’t even know what you did, do you?”

She wagged her tail and licked his hand. The dog might put on a good show of ferocity for people ringing the doorbell or walking by, but she’d never actually met a person she disliked. And she seemed especially fond of this Ursula person. Of course, she was easily bribed.

Pushy woman. And yet Mac couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt for the way he’d treated her. She wasn’t a reporter, using him as a way to sell papers. She just wanted access to the ski trails. She wasn’t going to get it—Mac had no intention of allowing strangers on his land and he needed the fence for the dog—but it wasn’t an unreasonable request. And she had dropped off those amazing cinnamon rolls.

His mouth watered, thinking of them. She probably made an excellent salmon dip, too. It was bound to be better than the bologna sandwich he was probably going to have instead. He loved Copper River salmon. One of his favorite restaurants in Tulsa always had a special promotion in May when the first Copper River salmon arrived. Maybe the neighborly thing to do would have been to accept the food and politely refuse her request.

Listen to him—as susceptible as the dog about food bribes. Ursula seemed like a nice woman. She had the sort of face he liked, intelligent eyes with crinkles at the corners as if she smiled often, a faint sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

But even if Mac had wanted company, he was in no shape to be around other people. He was better off alone. And everyone else was better off away from him.